


Ample Warning

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [132]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers being assholes, F/M, Family, Gen, Humor, Meet the Family, Ponds is everyone's mom, Shebnanigans, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28426383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: There is something very important Aayla needs to know.  There is, in fact, a list of important things Aayla needs to know.  Bly is determined to make sure she hears it fromhimfirst.
Relationships: CC-5052 | Bly/Aayla Secura
Series: Soft Wars [132]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 26
Kudos: 391





	Ample Warning

Bly lingers outside what all of Star Corps maintains is ‘her office’ for suspiciously long before he ventures up the will to knock.

The door, Aayla would like to point out, is not only open but permanently so for reasons coincidentally similar to this one: troopers lingering at some all-too arbitrary boundary and talking themselves out of approaching her.

Aayla won’t have it. Bly knows that. Bly had been present when she’d entirely taken said doors off their tracks only a few months into the war. (It was a fit of pique she’s very glad Master Quin will never, ever, find out about.) Bly will, if he doesn’t wish to be stalked through the corridors of the _Intrepid_ and downed like an errant eeopie, unmoor himself from the threshold, trust the door frame to hold itself up and march his cute behind in to speak to her like the warrior she thought she was marrying.

Ah, that thought may have traveled. How _terribly_ careless of her.

She levels the blandest one-eyed look at her skulking partner and holds it rigid. He’s as sheepish as she’s seen him as he slinks his way in. It is perhaps a little mean that she recloses her eyes once he has, but then it’s has been supremely hard to meditate with a hovering ball of indecisiveness haunting the halls for well over an hour. Bly maybe deserves it. A little. Her huff only lasts a moment.

She knows, better than nearly anyone, how much he overthinks his words. She knows how he labors over subtext, how mindful he is of every syllable so that each one is _right_. Skills taught in a childhood dotted with a tendency to speak first long before thought, techniques wielded with practiced deftness so no one misunderstands him. She reaches out welcome through the Force and feels the moth-wing-agitated edges of his flickering mind somewhat settle.

He folds cross-legged onto one of the many (many, many) cushions scattered around the room, produces an ever-present holopad from somewhere she’s given up trying to divine and tucks his mind into whirling bullet points and statistics. He snags another cushion to squish between his back and the bulkhead, then two more of those when the first proves too flat.

It doesn’t even make a dent in their number. They multiply, the cushions. Star Corps troopers won’t let a single deployment go by without a half dozen of them bringing back one that’s caught their eye, some bright or shiny or simply bizarre specimen of pillowhood they think she’ll like. Some fiend somewhere created an entry for her in the Vode’s omnipresent Manual, filled in something about lekku and pillows. There hasn’t been floor space remaining in her ‘office’ for quite a few tendays since. Her bunk is a waist-high nest. It’s dreadfully cozy. She’ll only pummel Anakin a little for starting it.

Bly idly chuckles as he catches the edges of that thought from deep in concentration in his datapad, list and details smoothing the surface of his mind in ways he claims are as good as meditation. They aren’t of course. Aayla has an entire lifetime to prove that wrong.

It takes him one long second to parse that thought. The cutest little trill of giddy glee shivers through the Force. Aayla smirks.

“Unfair,” Bly huffs and he’s very fortunate Aayla has agreed in principle to limit the amount of time she spends trying to get him to blush. The tinge of pink at the bridge of his nose is endearing. She lets that thought float too, and the flush deepens.

He snaps a pillow at her head, and it’s simpler than breathing to catch handlessly just an inch from her nose. It floods the room, how impressed he is with such a simple thing. It’s embarrassing and heady and flattering and maybe she lets the pillow twirl a little in the air before dropping back among its fellows. She’s shown off more since meeting Bly than she ever had, even as a padawan. He brings out a side of her that wants to play.

“Back to your Jedi business,” he chides. He’s unpracticed in the art, clearly, but the image he projects of her crankily unbalanced the _once_ where she’d gone weeks without centering herself is unmistakable.

She’s removed his shell enough times to know precisely where the plastoid leaves his bodyglove exposed. He knows she knows. He braces for the expected jab to his armpit. He yelps at the pinch behind his knee. His precisely placed backing of cushions go tumbling.

“You’re lucky you’re fierce,” he grumbles.

This time it’s Aayla that trills glee. Maybe Bly might have missed it, if Aayla had tried to shield. He wouldn't have missed the way the tips of her lekku curl in giddy pleasure. Bly grins smug satisfaction.

(‘Find yourself a being that first of all admires your right hook,’ Master Quin had said, the moment Aayla was old enough to understand what he meant. ‘And if instead the first thing they like is how cute you are, introduce them to that right hook.’

‘I’m left-handed,’ Aayla had said, just to be a brat. Master Quin made her practice non-dominant-hand combat for _years_.)

It isn’t much longer before she packs away the remaining of her thoughts and feelings. She has the most pressing addressed; the rest can be reexamined later, when Bly’s restless mind isn’t churning wildly through lists.

Anxious.

He often is, she’s found. Often doubts himself and his actions for all his face so rarely shows it. Never about his duties, though: his faith in her, his confidence in his decisions, his trust in his men’s abilities is unshakable. No, he saves his second-guessing for his life otherwise.

Aalya surfaces from the depths of her own mind, opens both eyes and meets his.

“Tell me.”

Bly’s battles will always be hers.

Bly dips his head, acknowledging. He raises his datapad, reads.

“When I was three,” he starts.

Aayla is. Very confused.

“Pardon.”

“When I was three,” Bly continues as if this was a perfectly normal conversation to be having, “I once ate three packages of a deceptively-dense protein snack. Ponds will say eight, Cody will say he told me to stop. They’re both liars. Wolffe will say I threw up on his pod which is _also_ a lie. I experienced mild intestinal distress and did in fact make it to the fresher before any undigested revisitation.”

Aayla blinks and attempts to process. “That is -”

“That is the entirety of that story. Any additions are also false.”

“I see.”

Bly nods, as though she actually does see. She very much doesn’t. He consults his list.

“When I was seven, Cody dropped Rex. He will _claim_ that I did. That is a lie. The truth is that Wolffe threw him and Cody did not catch him. I was in no way involved in any part of that activity. That is important to remember: I wasn’t even there. Neither was Ponds so if he corroborates, he’s lying.”

He looks up, waits for her slow, very bewildered nod, and then continues down the list.

She only catches the barest glimpse at the screen. The font is tiny and the paragraphs extensive. Quite a number of entries appear to have sub-clauses. It looks like an intelligence brief.

“Arming with _factual knowledge_ ,” Bly grits darkly the one time she manages enough words to ask. “ _Preemptively_.”

… maybe it’s a vod thing?

* * *

“You can’t,” Aayla says with ringing finality. “I am fully committed to Bly. There is nothing you can say that will change that.”

Commander Cody, or Kote, Aayla is unsure of the distinction. Whichever he is, he’s Bly’s brother and his grin is wide and toothy.

“Good,” he booms.

Bly… Bly groans. His ears flush entirely red and he’s _so pleased_ Aayla is sure she could sense him without the Force. And yet he’s also shot through with resigned mortification. Aayla turns to him, but he’s already being efficiently shuffled to the far side of the table between Captain Rex and Commander Wolffe. His protests are as token as they are ignored.

They must have practiced this move.

“That's what we were hoping you’d say,” Commander Cody continues. Commander Ponds slides in on her other side. She doesn’t see where he conjures the drinks he passes around.

“We don’t have to be polite any more, if you’re sure you won’t be scared off.” Commander Ponds snickers and oh, is that what this is? Some friendly hassling of the significant other? Aayla chooses to be flattered, takes it in the spirit of inclusion it is offered. There isn’t any malice in any one of them.

She politely accepts the drink, politely slams it, and politely accepts the refill. ‘Bring it’, her demure little smile says. The grins that ring the are thrilled. Minus Bly, who looks quite a lot like he’d like to climb under the table instead.

“Illustrations first,” Commander Ponds decides, “ _then_ exposition.” He presses her hands filled with an ancient, oft-patched comm unit. The tiny, _so tiny_ human glaring out of the image is pouty-cheeked obstinate _cute_.

Oh.

She flips the display and the same small child stares scrunch-nose disgusted at a teenager attempting to wheedle him into a tiny, tiny jumpsuit. Another, and the small child is trying his pudgy best to keep a holopad away from the teenager’s frustrated hands.

_Oh_!

Is _that_ what this is!? And here she was, rudely slandering Bly’s family with awful assumptions-

_Please_ , Bly thinks desperately at her, _slander more_.

_Villain_ , she shoots back. _Shush, I’m charming the in-laws_.

He flushes. Captain Rex giggles, and Commander Wolffe pounds companionably at his back. Bly fails miserably at being irritated.

“I’ve made you a copy of the next one,” Commander Ponds, says. Generous, lovely Ponds. The next image is of tiny Bly rolling his eyes, cheeks puffed out in annoyance, face framed by wispy baby curls. Oh Force, their children are going to be _adorable_ : Aayla hopes they have boys.

“Am I allowed to promote favorite vode?”

“You are encouraged,” her new second favorite vod assures. Aayla and Ponds share solemn nods of understanding. “Exposition?” he offers.

“Exposition” she demands. “Tell me _e_ _verything_.”

“Aayla, don’t-”

“First off,” Cody says, “did he ever tell you about that time he got his foot stuck in the toilet?”

“No, first tell her about the time he dropped me.”

“ _I did not-_ ”

Rex sniffs. “I’m still traumatized.”

Wolffe grins. “He’s still traumatized Bly.”

Bly’s groaned ‘kark’ is quickly overrun.


End file.
